The Alaska legislature recently approved a project that will place free pregnancy tests in bar bathrooms as part of a larger campaign to raise awareness about fetal alcohol syndrome. But what is fetal alcohol syndrome, and could this effort possibly help address it?

The withdrawal of public services in Detroit is typically framed as an unavoidable response to the city’s declining tax base. Alternatively, we frame these violations as an active assault against communities of color and low-income families in the interest of white-controlled financial institutions.

Despite being surrounded by the largest collection of freshwater lakes in the world, thousands of Detroit residents—most of them low-income people of color—are finding themselves without access to fresh water because of actions by the city’s water department that advocates say are in violation of Detroiters’ human rights.

A new report says that the federal government is the largest funder of low-wage jobs for working women and people of color, and that President Obama should take executive action to help lift them into the middle class.

Last month’s CNN piece on sex trafficking in Cambodia was notable because it represented a common failure of the media to report effectively on issues like trafficking in ways that do not compound the harm to those most affected.

Conservatives have been turning up the volume on the irrational, unevidenced claim that poverty is caused by not being married. In reality, poverty is caused by not having enough money. This should be obvious, but it clearly needs to be said more often.

Shame is a powerful cultural and political tool that has been used to keep people from accessing the resources they need. Shame has kept my name anonymous in this article, but it will not stop me from accessing health care, telling this story, or encouraging others to do the same.